Reviewed by Tim Ashley

We owe the rediscovery of Leonardo Vinci primarily to the
determination of countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic to revive his operas
with forces that aim to approximate, as closely as possible, those for
which they were written, which nowadays strike us as unusual, even
bizarre, though the 18th century thought differently.

Regarded very
much as an equal by Vivaldi and Handel, Vinci, who died in 1730,
comparatively young and supposedly murdered by his mistress's jealous
husband, trained in Naples, but wrote his major operas for Rome, where
a papal proscription, in force since 1599, forbade women from
appearing on the stage. Vinci consequently wrote for all-male casts,
deploying castratos as his heroines as well as some of his heroes: the
practice was not, in fact, uncommon in castrato-obsessed Italy at the
time.

The Baroque revival has seen his work championed by, amongst others,
Simone Kermes and Cecilia Bartoli, but a turning point was reached in
2012 when Cencic decided to perform and record Vinci's Artaserse with
the castrato roles taken by virtuoso countertenors, a ground-breaking
achievement that opened ears to a composer of remarkable psychological
perception and depth, and revealed the startling potential of the
countertenor voice itself. Now we have Catone in Utica cast along
similar lines, and though it doesn't, perhaps inevitably, bring with
it the element of surprise, even shock, that accompanied its
predecessor, we are dealing, I think, with a greater work and arguably
a finer recording.

The opera dramatises the final days of Marcus Cato, one of the last
great libertarians of the Roman Republic. A fierce opponent of the
military and imperial ambitions of Julius Caesar, he committed suicide
at Utica in North Africa in 46 BC when defeat at the hands of Caesar's
forces became inevitable. The subject was of immense importance in the
early 18th century when republican and imperial ideologies vied for
supremacy. There were two major literary treatments in English.
Nicholas Rowe's hugely influential translation of Lucan's Pharsalia,
of which Cato is the morally impeachable hero, was published in 1718.
Even more important, however, was Joseph Addison's play Cato, first
performed in 1713, the appearance of which was to have far-reaching
consequences.

The play became a rallying cry for liberal supporters of the
Protestant Hanoverian succession in the face of a potential return to
Catholicism under the Jacobite branch of the Stuarts, who had the more
legitimate claim to the British throne. Its success was even greater,
however, in Britain's American colonies, where its libertarian
ideology became integral to demands for independence: the
revolutionary slogan “Give me liberty or give me death”, derives from
one of Cato's speeches; during the War of Independence, George
Washington insisted the play be performed for his army at their camp
at Valley Forge.

Translated into Italian in 1715, Addison's Cato was also the source
for Metastasio's libretto, which Vinci was to be the first composer to
set it in 1728. The great cry for liberty remains at its centre in one of
the big confrontations between Catone and Cesare around which the work
is structured. The overall tone, however, has changed. The hidden
relationship between private agendas and political decisions has
become Metastasio's principal theme, and the opera is essentially a
tragedy in which both ideological loftiness and deceit are brought
into sharp moral focus.

Catone is insistent that his daughter Marzia should marry Arbace, the
Numidian prince who loves her and is her father's political ally. Both
men are unaware, however, that Marzia, in less troubled times, was
Cesare's mistress: the pair are still in love, though Cesare,
unscrupulous throughout most of the opera's course, is persistently
willing to sacrifice the relationship for his ambition. The situation
is complicated by the presence in Utica of Emilia, the widow of
Cesare's murdered enemy Pompey, an altogether more vindictive figure
than her sorrowing counterpart, Cornelia, in Handel's Giulio Cesare.
She, in her turn, is ostensibly being pursued by Fulvio, a senatorial
legate, apparently of Cesare's party, though Metastasio tellingly
leaves his loyalties unclear.

Metastasio was a greater, more subtle writer than many have assumed,
and the opera's dramaturgy is dependent for its impact on constantly
shifting perspectives that repeatedly cast doubt on its protagonists'
motivations. Marzia strings Arbace along with promises of eventual
marriage and urges her father to consider peace, all of which hides
her determination to repeatedly manoeuvre herself into Cesare's
presence. Cato's moral nobility masks a catastrophic inflexibility of
will, and though his opposition to political tyranny is portrayed as
wholly admirable, he proves to be a tyrant himself in private: when
the truth eventually comes out about Marzia's feelings for Cesare, he
disowns her, announcing he wishes he had killed her at birth.
Metastasio deceives us himself in his depiction of the emotional
havering between Fulvio and Emilia, initially leading us to believe
that Fulvio is lulling her into a false sense of security in order to
be able to spy on Cato's camp: it gradually becomes apparent, however,
that his feelings for her are sincere, and that it is she who is
exploiting his sexual interest as part of her own plot to have Cesare
assassinated.

Vinci's score probes the resulting ambiguities with great subtlety.
Militarism and seduction frequently collide. Cesare, as one might
expect, has the lion's share of the display pieces: the role was
written for the castrato Carestini and his arias, with their ferocious
coloratura covering a colossal range, are tracked by obbligatos for
trumpet or horns, the latter a constant reminder that he is
essentially a hunter homing in on his prey. Catone is a tenor, as is
Fulvio: Catone's noble vocal lines turn precariously angular and
clipped under stress, while Fulvio's protestations of desire are
lyrical and at times deeply erotic. His 'Nacesti alle pene’, dreamily
addressed to Emilia is one of the opera's two great declarations of
love: the other, 'Quell amor che poco accende’, exposes Cesare's only
moment of weakness, when he thinks Marzia is moving away from him.
Marzia's grand statements of passion and rage mark her out as being
very much his companion, musically as well as emotionally – again the
span of the vocal line is often immense – while Emilia's high-lying
arias alternately wheedle and sputter with fury. Arbace, struggling to
maintain both integrity and dignity in the chaos that surrounds him,
has the most consistently beautiful and reflective music in the score.

Throughout we're aware of a great melodist at work – it's no wonder
that Handel and Vivaldi regarded Vinci as a serious rival – and his
dark-hued orchestration reveals remarkable surety. More pertinently,
perhaps, he allows traditional structure to buckle as the dramatic
tension mounts. Continuo gradually gives way to full orchestra in the
recitatives, and when we reach the denouement, the pattern of
recitative and aria collapses, first into ensemble writing, then into
the extended passage of through-composed recitative that brings the
opera to its disorientating close.

The ending was one aspect of the work that its first audiences found
problematic. The premiere, at Rome's Teatro delle Dame, seemingly
aroused mixed feelings. Metastasio offended contemporary sensibilities
by locating Emilia's attempted assassination of Cesare in a disused
underground aqueduct – by implication a sewer, and a potent symbol of
the moral depths to which everyone has sunk, except Arbace, the only
character absent from the scene. Doubts were also raised about the
appropriateness of Catone's suicide – he bleeds to death on the stage,
having stabbed himself off it – as a subject for performance in papal
Rome where suicide was considered a mortal sin. When other composers,
Handel and Vivaldi among them, took up the libretto, they tinkered
with the final scenes. Vivaldi's Catone is forcibly prevented from
killing himself, paving the way for eventual reconciliation with
Cesare, which makes nonsense of much that has gone before. Handel's
1732 pasticcio – superbly revived at this year's London Handel
festival – retains Catone's suicide, though Handel, unwilling to end
the work with recitative, follows it with a scene in which Marzia
becomes deranged: her closing aria, ironically, is the now-famous ‘Vo
Solcando’, which Handel imported from Vinci's own Artaserse.

Issued to coincide with a European tour of the work with the same
forces, the recording, meanwhile, is a stunner. Cencic casts himself
as Arbace, effectively leaving Franco Fagioli's Cesare and Juan
Sancho's Catone centre stage. All three performances are finely
judged. Cencic's dark, warm voice is extraordinarily beautiful, and
the quiet intensity of his singing, all deep feeling and rapturously
sustained lines, admirably suggests a man whose emotional sincerity
is compounded with innate moral fibre. Fagioli's Cesare, in contrast,
is all hauteur and reckless flamboyance. Not everyone will like his
frequent plunges into chest voice, or his aspirated, Bartoli-ish
way with the coloratura, though his accuracy and precision is a feat
in itself that continually startles. Sancho, meanwhile, proves to be
both an exceptional technician and a remarkable vocal actor: his
loftiness and rage hit home with every phrase; his denunciation of
Valer Sabadus's Marzia is genuinely terrifying, while his death scene,
complete with its prophecy of Cesare's own assassination at the hands
of Brutus, is immensely powerful in its naturalism.

Sabadus makes a sensuous, even voluptuous-sounding Marzia,
all heightened emotions and stroppy grandeur, in marked contrast to
Vince Yi's icily self-controlled Emilia. Sabadus's tone can sometimes
lose warmth in his lower registers, for which he compensates for
spectacular abilities elsewhere, including the kind of pinprick high
staccatos one associates primarily with the great divas of yesteryear.
Just occasionally you also wish there was a bit more bite to Yi's
explosions of anger, though he and Sabadus work wonderfully well
together in the big confrontations between the two women.

No one is likely to have any qualms about Martin Mitterrutzner's
Fulvio, though, sung with persuasive sensuality and an appealing gleam
in the tone throughout. You can't fault Il Pomo d'Oro under its violinist-director Riccardo Minasi, either. The playing, all suave
strings, fiery brass and rich woodwind, is tremendous in both finesse
and enthusiasm, and throughout they generate that crackle of
electricity familiar to anyone who has heard these musicians at London's Wigmore
Hall, and you understand completely why they have become
today's ‘period’ ensemble of choice for Italian Baroque. An outstanding
recording of a remarkable work, with complete text and translations provided, and highly recommended.